Dead to Rights by J. A. Jance Read Free Book Online

right to have some fun.”
    Joanna nodded. “Me, too,” she admitted.
    The very fact that Joanna was finally able to concede that maybe the difficulties between her and her mother weren’t all Eleanor’s fault was in itself a gigantic first step. Eleanor was tough to live with, but perhaps Joanna hadn’t been all sweetness and light, either. Still, it was difficult for Joanna to forget or forgive Eleanor all the years she had spent carping about Joanna’s shotgun wedding when she herself had been guilty of a very similar transgression.
    Maybe, Joanna thought, it’s time for me to stop acting like a big, overgrown kid. Maybe I should just shut up, and get in the damned car.
    “Where did you go?” Marianne asked.
    “I was thinking,” Joanna said. “Maybe I’ve been too hard on my mother.”
    Marianne Maculyea laughed. “It’s possible,” she said. “But then, haven’t we all?”
    Daisy Maxwell brought their lunches right then. That was pretty much the last chance the two women had to talk. During the course of the meal, several people stopped by to visit with one or the other of them—parishioners from Canyon Methodist Church who were worried about how the organ repairs were going, or someone trying to sign them up to bake cakes to be sold at a local charity auction.
    Joanna and Marianne had finished up the last of their coffee and were standing in line at the cash register when a fire truck, siren blaring, roared past the outside door. The truck was headed north on Bisbee Road.
    “Somebody’s probably trying to burn down Brewery Gulch again,” Daisy Maxwell quipped as she took Joanna’s money and handed back a fistful of change. In the past few months there had been a series of arson fires up in Old Bisbee, where a combination of steep terrain and tinder-dry conditions had made fire fighting difficult.
    “Let’s hope not,” Joanna answered. “If the wind happens to he blowing in the wrong direction, wt . could end up with a disaster on our hands.”
    Out in her vehicle, Joanna turned the Blazer in the direction of the department, heading north on Bisbee Road, following the same route the fire truck had taken. When she came through the underpass that had been used to carry mine waste out to the tailings dump, she could see smoke just off to the right over the crest of the hill.
    Beyond the underpass, a traffic circle had been installed to facilitate movement of traffic on Highway 80 and in-town vehicles moving from one area of Bisbee to another. Half a mile east of the traffic circle, Joanna could see a flock of emergency vehicles gathered on either side of the roadway at a spot she knew had to be right by the entrance to the Buck-waiter Animal Clinic. Not only was there a clot of emergency vehicles, there was also a cloud of smoke billowing up into a deep-blue sky.
    Joanna’s heart fell. If the clinic had somehow caught fire, what did that mean for the animal patients there awaiting treatment? What about Tigger? What if he was dead? Jenny was already an emotional powder keg. After everything else that had happened to her, would she be strong enough to withstand the loss of a beloved pet?
    Traffic had come to a halt, backing up for the better part of a mile, almost as far as the traffic circle itself. Turning on both flashers and siren, Joanna made her way into the left-hand lane, but even there she had to swerve around vehicles that had simply stopped in the middle of the road. As she picked her way forward, she pulled the Blazer’s two-way radio microphone out of its holder and thumbed the push-to-talk butt / m.
    “Dispatch,” she said. “‘This is Sheriff Brady. I’m just east of the traffic circle on Highway 80. What’s going on?”
    “We’ve got a fire at the Buckwalter Animal Clinic,” dispatcher Larry Kendrick answered.
    “I can see that from here,” she returned. “What kind of fire?”
    “It’s confined to the barn.”
    “Not the clinic?”
    “No, the clinic is